Zid Vicious

It would be remiss of me to not to talk about the World Cup. Especially as thanks to Canadian Immigration I got to watch the vast majority of games. The whole tournament lived up to and even exceeded my expectations. There were some fantastic matches, wonderful goals and exhibitions of tactical mastery.

I had a email chat with Toronto Star soccer correspondent Cathal Kelly last year where I said I hoped that the tournament wouldn’t be wrecked by overly tactical matches. And it wasn’t.

As he said, the team who won it was the team that came together the most. Italy played some great football, no more so than in the epic semi final against Germany and, in my view, thoroughly deserved to win against a tiring and somewhat unimaginative French team.

I’d rather the iconic image from the 2006 World Cup be Fabio Grosso running away from scoring against Germany shaking his head and screaming “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!” (in Italian) but how can you overlook this image?

What I can’t believe is that Zidane’s final act in football was to be sent off for the same violent thuggery that has marred his entire career. What makes it worse is that he reacted to a comment that was no worse than anything that I’ve heard on an under-16 school rugby pitch or village cricket game.

Sledging is a part of sport and while it can’t be condoned, how many of us would react to some particularly brutal edits to a press release by chinning our VP?

Everyone gets worked up and upset at work, but you sometimes need to be the bigger person, plaster on the PR smile and keep going regardless. Some may regard it as being fake, but in reality it’s a part and parcel of working life.

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Everything posted on this blog is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my employer or its clients. DDB is a global agency so any mention of any organisation could be a conflict of interests but not one that I can disclose.